""Iran has also been carrying out covert ballistic missile tests and rocket launches, including testing missiles capable of delivering a nuclear payload in contravention of U.N. [Security Council] Resolution 1929, and it has announced that it intends to triple its capacity to produce 20 percent enriched uranium," CNN quoted Hague as saying at the House of Commons.

Iran last year began further refining low-enriched uranium from its stockpile, ostensibly for producing medical isotopes at an existing research reactor in Tehran. The United States and other Western powers, though, have feared the process could help Iran produce nuclear-weapon material, which has an enrichment level around 90 percent. Tehran has insisted its nuclear ambitions are strictly peaceful (see GSN, June 27)."